Base Co-Founder: No Price Manipulation, No Playing Favorites
Base co-founder Jesse Pollak has shut down rumors of behind-the-scenes price manipulation, making it clear that the team won’t interfere with markets or push specific tokens.
Responding to community concerns, Pollak said Base will not coordinate privately, deploy capital, or influence charts to steer an asset’s price. He stressed that doing so would hurt other projects, go against free-market principles, be unsustainable, and could even be illegal.
“Base, and every market, should be free, open, and fair. It’s my responsibility to keep it that way.”
Focus on Growth, Not Market Games
Instead of backing individual tokens, the Coinbase-incubated Layer 2 plans to boost visibility and distribution for high-quality apps and assets across the ecosystem. Pollak admitted there’s room for improvement and said the team aims to attract more capital and attention to Base overall.
The comments followed debates on X about why Base isn’t actively supporting projects capable of reaching large market caps. Some users noted this isn’t unique to Base, but part of a wider market trend where speculative meme coins often dominate.
Base Leads in Layer 2 Fees
Despite the controversy, Base continues to dominate on-chain activity. On January 14, it generated around $147,000 in daily fees, capturing nearly 70% of all Ethereum Layer 2 fee revenue. That put it far ahead of competitors like Arbitrum ($39K) and Starknet ($9K).
Other scaling solutions, including Linea, Optimism, Unichain, zkSync, Scroll, and Ink, lagged behind, with many struggling to generate even $5,000 in daily fees.
Speculation Still Lingers
Earlier this month, speculation flared after X product lead Nikita Bier shared a mock screenshot of a “Base” token priced at $130 with a $373B market cap, reigniting debate across the crypto community.
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